Unit 2
Personality, Perception, Motivation
An organization doesn’t work in isolation. There is interaction between lots many employees or organizational members. The members dwell from different background with individual differences. The study of individual differences is essential to understand the behavior of employees at workplace. The different categories of individual behavior can be Attitudes, Beliefs, Values, Personality, Learning Process, Motivation, Personality and so on.
Meaning and Concept:
The term ‘personality’ is derived from the Latin word ‘persona’ which means a mask. According to K. Young, “Personality is a patterned body of habits, traits, attitudes and ideas of an individual, as these are organized externally into roles and statuses, and as they relate internally to motivation, goals, and various aspects of selfhood.”
G. W. Allport defined it as “a person’s pattern of habits, attitudes, and traits which determine his adjustment to his environment.”
From the above definitions, the following features of personality can be derived:
- Personality includes both structure and dynamics.
- Personality is not a mysterious phenomenon and is unique.
- It refers to persistent qualities of the individual and expresses consistency and regularly.
- It is influenced by social interaction and is defined in terms of behavior.
Determinants of Personality:
They are as follows:
Environment:
The influence of physical environment on culture as per geographical environment sometimes determines cultural variability. That the Eskimos have a culture different from that of the Indians is due to the fact that the geographical environment is different.
Heredity:
Some of the similarities in human’s personality are said to be due to his common heredity. Each and every group of human being inherits the same general set of biological needs and capacities. The origination of human characteristic starts right from the union of male and female germ cells into a single cell which is formed at the moment of conception.
Culture:
Culture largely determines the types of personality that predominates in the particular group. Personality is the subjective aspect of culture. Personality and culture are considered as two sides of the same coin.
Particular Experiences:
The particular and unique experiences determine personality. There are two types of experiences one, from continuous association with one’s group, second, sudden and do not recur. The type of people who meet the child daily has a major influence on his personality. The personality of parents affects a child’s personality.
Personality Theories:
Trait Theories
According to this theory, personality is made up of a number of broad traits. A trait is basically a relatively stable characteristic that causes an individual to behave in certain ways. Some of the best-known trait theories include Eysenck's three-dimension theory and the five-factor theory of personality.
Psychoanalytic Theory
Psychoanalytic theory is the theory of personality organization and the dynamics of personality development that guides psychoanalysis, a clinical method for treating psychopathology. Sigmund Freud had ceased his analysis of the brain and his physiological studies and shifted his focus to the study of the mind and the related psychological attributes making up the mind, and on treatment using free association and the phenomena of transference. His study emphasized the recognition of childhood events that could influence the mental functioning of adults. His examination of the genetic and then the developmental aspects gave the psychoanalytic theory its characteristics.
Self-Theory
There are many theories about what exactly self-concept is and how it develops. Generally, theorists agree on the following points:
- Self-concept is about who we are and includes cognitive and affective judgments about ourselves.
- It is multi-dimensional, incorporating our views of ourselves in terms of several different aspects like social, religious, spiritual, physical, and emotional.
- It is influenced by biological and environmental factors, but social interaction plays a big role as well.
- It develops through childhood and early adulthood when it is more easily changed or updated.
Meaning:
It is defined as the collective conceptions of what is considered good, desirable, and proper or bad, undesirable, and improper in a culture.
Types:
There are two types of values:
1. Terminal Values
These values are most important or most desirable. These refer to desirable end-states of existence like goals to achieve during his or her lifetime. They include happiness, recognition, self-respect, inner harmony, professional excellence and leading a prosperous life.
2. Instrumental Values
It deals with views on acceptable modes of conductor means of achieving the terminal values. These include being honest, sincere, ethical, and being ambitious. These values are more focused on personality traits and character.
Meaning and Concept:
Attitude is a functional state of readiness which determines the organism to react in a characteristic way to certain stimuli or stimulus situations.
According to Murphy and Murphy, attitude is primarily a way of being set towards or against certain things.
Baldwin views that attitude is a readiness for attention or action of a definite pattern.
“The concept of attitude is probably the most distinctive and indispensable concept in contemporary social psychology.”
Factors in attitude formation
The factors which lead to development of attitudes are:
a. Family
b. Peers
c. Conditioning
d. Social adjustment functions
e. Direct instruction
f. Modeling
g. Satisfaction of wants
h. Prejudices
Method of finding Employee’s attitude
1. Impressionistic Method:
It is non-statistical in that it does not lead to quantitative knowledge. It is based upon the observation of behavior and attitudes. It is the least desirable but because it is a method for measurement of attitude, it is the most widely used.
2. Guided Interview:
It is a purposeful conversation in which the interviewer tries to obtain honest and complete answers to a specific number of questions. It has the advantage of face-to-face contact. This type of interview is used most frequently in industry when considering an applicant for a job. It can be used in handling group complaints of workers. However, it has not been used very often in determining employee attitudes.
3. Unguided Interview (Non-directive):
It is characterized by the free nature of the discussion and by the fact that it is the person interviewed who really defines its limits. There are no specific questions that the interviewer asks and his main concern is to probe and establish the emotional content of the interview.
4. Questionnaire:
It lends to the mass-production techniques of determining employee attitudes. It is similar to guided interview. The fact that eight minutes is reported as the length of the interview means that they went at a very rapid pace.
5. Indirect Method:
It is intended to provide a freer rein of expression. The objective is to explore the “deeper levels rather than to deal only with the manifest verbal content.” This method deliberately attempts to conceal the intent of the measurement and allows the experimenter to observe and measure without producing an effect on the attitude itself. Varieties of techniques have been included within this category: word associations, sentence completions, or picture and story theme completion.
Difference between Values and Attitudes
Similarities between Values, Attitudes and Beliefs
Meaning and Concept:
“Perception is the process through which the information from outside environment is selected, received, organized and interpreted to make it meaningful to you. This input of meaningful information results in decisions and actions.”
Concept:
Perception is an important aspect of life. It is the ability to understand, mental grasp of qualities by means of senses or awareness. When we communicate with someone, the language, the tone and gesture we use portrays an individual’s character and a kind of relationship he wants to develop.
Process of perception
- Selection
Selecting is the first part of the perception process, in which we focus our attention on certain incoming sensory information in the form of Visual and Aural Stimulation. When we tend to pay attention to information is salient. It is the degree to which something attracts our attention can be abstract, like a concept, or concrete, like an object. Needs and Interests play an important role for selection.
2. Organizing Information
In this, we sort and categorize information that we perceive based on innate and learned cognitive patterns. Three ways we of sorting things into patterns are by using proximity, similarity, and difference. Punctuation refers to the structuring of information into a timeline to determine the cause (stimulus) and effect (response) of our communication interactions.
3. Interpreting Information
Interpretation is much more deliberate and conscious step in the perception process. Here, we assign meaning to our experiences using mental structures known as schemata. Schemata are like databases of stored related information that we use to interpret new experiences. Humans have fairly complicated schemata as small units of information combine to make more meaningful complexes of information.
Significance of perception
- Every person perceives the world and the environment differently. Every person also approaches to life problems differently. The thing which appears best to us may not appear best to another.
- Study of perception helps in understanding the behavior of a person in a particular situation by identifying how the person perceives the situation.
- People’s perception is influenced by their needs. Hence by studying the perception, the needs of the people can be identified.
- Studying of perception helps business managers to tackle employees who look into things differently from their point of view.
Meaning and Nature:
Learning is a key process in human behavior. All living is learning. If we compare the simple, crude ways in which a child feels and behaves, with the complex modes of adult behavior, his skills, habits, thought, sentiments and the like- we will know what difference learning has made to the individual.
There are three important elements of learning:
- Learning is a change in behavior which may be better or worse.
- The change in behavior takes place through experience or practice. But to note that changes due to growth or acquiring maturity is not learning.
- The change in behavior must be relatively permanent and last a fairly long time.
Components of learning process:
Drive
Learning frequently occurs in the presence of drive – any strong stimulus that impels action. Drives are basically of two types -primary (or physiological); and secondary (or psychological). These two categories of drives often interact with each other. Individuals operate under many drives at the same time. To predict a behavior, it is necessary to establish which drives are stimulating the most.
Cue Stimuli
Cue stimuli are those factors that exist in the environment as perceived by the individual. The idea is to discover the conditions under which stimulus will increase the probability of eliciting a specific response. There may be two types I of stimuli with respect to their results in terms of response concerned: generalization and discrimination.
Responses
The stimulus results in responses. Responses may be in the physical form or may be in terms of attitudes, familiarity, perception or other complex phenomena. In the above example, the supervisor discriminates between the worker producing low quality products and the worker producing high quality products, and positively responds only to the quality conscious worker.
Reinforcement
Reinforcement is a fundamental condition of learning. Without reinforcement, no measurable modification of behavior takes place. Reinforcement may be defined as the environmental event’s affecting the probability of occurrence of responses with which they are associated.
Retention
The stability of learned behavior over time is defined as retention and its contrary is known as forgetting. Some of the learning is retained over a period of time while others may be forgotten.
Meaning
Motivation is one of the forces that lead to performance. Motivation is defined as the desire to achieve a goal or a certain performance level, leading to goal-directed behavior. When we refer to someone as being motivated, we mean that the person is trying hard to accomplish a certain task.
Theory of motivation
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs:
The theory is based on a simple premise: Human beings have needs that are hierarchically ranked. This theory was propounded by Abraham Maslow. There are some needs that are basic to all human beings, and in their absence nothing else matters. As we satisfy these basic needs, we start looking to satisfy higher order needs. In other words, once a lower level need is satisfied, it no longer serves as a motivator. Maslow identified five needs of human beings which may be presented in the form of a pyramid:
The first need for human being are physiological needs which refer to basic needs like food, water, shelter, exercise which are necessary for survival. As the physiological needs are satisfied, the next level of need that is Safety Needs gets activated. These needs may be in the form of job security, protection from danger, etc. The fulfillment of Safety needs activates the third level of needs which are Social needs. Man is a social animal, hence man needs to socialize and get accepted by the society. The fulfillment of social needs again activates the fourth level of need which is esteem needs. Now man needs to satisfy his or her ego needs to prove the superiority among others. He or she needs to fulfill his or her ego needs and gain a respectable and reputed position in the society. The last level of needs is self-actualization. In this level, man has reached his highest level of needs where he or she wants to realize his or potential or capability. He or she starts striving for realizing his or her dream.
ERG Theory
ERG theory, developed by Clayton Alderfer, is a modification of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Instead of the five needs that are hierarchically organized, Alderfer proposed that basic human needs may be grouped under three categories, namely, existence, relatedness, and growth. Existence corresponds to Maslow’s physiological and safety needs, relatedness corresponds to social needs, and growth refers to Maslow’s esteem and self-actualization.
Two-Factor Theory
Herzberg labeled factors causing dissatisfaction of workers as “hygiene” factors because these factors were part of the context in which the job was performed, as opposed to the job itself. Hygiene factors included company policies, supervision, working conditions, salary, safety, and security on the job. The presence of these factors doesn’t motivate the employees but their non-presence highly dissatisfies them.
In contrast, motivators are factors that are intrinsic to the job, such as achievement, recognition, interesting work, increased responsibilities, advancement, and growth opportunities. According to Herzberg’s research, motivators are the conditions that truly encourage employees to try harder. The non-presence of these factors doesn’t dissatisfy the employees but their presence highly motivates them.
Expectancy Theory
According to expectancy theory, individual motivation to put forth more or less effort is determined by a rational calculation in which individuals evaluate their situation. This theory was given by Porter, L. W., & Lawler, E. E. (1968). According to this theory, individuals ask themselves three questions.
References:
- Organizational behavior by Stephen P. Robbin & Seema Sanghi- pearson
- Organizational behavior by L.M. Prasad-S Chand & sons
- Organization behavior: managing people and organization by Gregory moorehead – Biztantra
